mere cat

Archive of May 2009

May 9, 2009

National Train Day

I don’t know much about the history or genesis of National Train Day (I think this year is the first one), but I do know that May 10th was selected as the date, because it is the anniversary of the driving of the “Golden Spike” in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, which completed America’s first transcontinental railroad. I’ll be heading down to 30th Street Station to partake in the celebration (and probably slip into Bridgewater’s Pub for a pint at some point).

Speaking of trains, mere SEPTA has been a huge success—I think upwards of six people have used it. :-) I wasn’t able to add all the features I had planned for National Train Day, but did make some incremental improvements. The most visible change is that it now shows the train number and endpoints for each train. I also reworked the connection algorithm, which has two benefits. Gone are the spurious connections that showed up in certain situations, and it now shows how to make a connection between stations on the same line that are skipped by express trains.